The Obscured Role of Women in Nonviolent Movements

From Argentina to Poland to Liberia and beyond, women have been leaders, spokespeople and frontline activists in non-violent struggles for peace and justice. But how women work in these struggles, and how they change them, has been little researched. That inattention has left women’s roles underestimated or ignored. On October 6, USIP will release a Special Report on women’s roles in non-violent struggles. With the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs (NDI) and the non-profit organization Just Vision, USIP will gather path-breaking activists, scholars and filmmakers to examine how women’s participation—and the success of non-violent campaigns—can be strengthened.

The new report notes that research finds non-violent movements with massive, diverse participation are more effective. The report’s author, Marie Principe, will join other panelists in discussing how policymakers and advocates of nonviolent change can best support women’s participation and leadership in such movements, and how to parlay this involvement into political and institutional gender equality. Participants will include human rights advocates Jimmie Briggs and ElsaMarie D’Silva, who have pioneered campaigns to end gender-based violence, and prominent filmmaker Julia Bacha, whose recent TED talk is titled “How Women Wage Conflict Without Violence.” Bacha will screen a preview of Just Vision's forthcoming documentary film on Palestinian women in the first intifada.